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Friday 23rd February
We hire a tuk-tuk and travel around with Colin and Michelle who we met yesterday. We start at the Royal Palace which is just so quiet compared with those in Thailand with the hordes of tourists. The silver pagoda has silver tiles all over the floor and some are held together with sellotape. Just goes to show that they haven't quite caught up with the rest of the world yet when it comes to preservation of their ancient artifacts. But I imagine as time goes on and more tourists arrive, they will gather the funds to take more care of things.
We head to the russian market this morning and I buy more presents for friends and family at home. I think my Mum must wonder what on earth I'm sending home as all these boxes keep arriving.
We invite our driver to join us for lunch. Mr Leang speaks wonderful english and doesn't mind answering our questions about his country. The average monthly wage is $50 dollars! He cannot yet afford to buy his tuk-tuk, as he's only 28 and hasn't saved enough yet so he rents it for $3 a day. He hopes to buy his own soon at a cost of around $550. He rents a room for $30 a month but pays extra for water and heating. The bathroom and kitchen in shared.
His parents farm rice in the countryside and he has 4 siblings. He also needs to save up around $1000 to pay to his brides family if he wishes to get married. So he's not thinking about that just yet!
I go to the National Museum which offers a tranquil respite after the traffic. There are sculptures and examples of bas-reliefs from local temples, an open courtyard in the centre with beautiful flowers and monks sitting around or wandering through the exhibitions just like tourists.
We go to a restaurant in the evening which comes under the heading of "Dining for a cause", where some of the cost of the meal goes to helping street kids in Cambodia. The older children also work in the restaurant and get training to help them get jobs. Certainly Aids once again seems to be some of the cause of orphaned children.
Saturday 24th February
We go to the Killing Fields where they have built a stupa to commemorate those who were murdered in the mass genocide in the space of 4 years, under the rule of Pol Pot. The stupa houses nearly 9,000 peoples skulls. Only half of the site here has been excavated and they have now stopped and left the rest to lie still covered as they cannot identify the bodies. The scary thing is that there are hundreds of sites like this across Cambodia and yet more being uncovered.
The site is being eroded by water and as the graves weren't very deep, as you walk around there are people's clothes in the dried mud so we all try to avoid walking on them. It's quite harrowing.
They estimate that 2 million people were killed during the ruling of Pol Pot, all intellectuals, as he tried to take the country back to a simple agricultural based state leaving only the farmers. How could one man have such a twisted vision and kill so many of his own people. The numbers are worse than Hitlers persecution of the Jews in WW2.
Next we went on to the S21 museum which was a school that was converted into a prison. All the people that were brough here were photographed when they arrived and when they were dead just to prove that they didn't escape. People died from starvation, torture, having acid poured up their noses, drowning, suffocation, being hit over the head, anything that would save using bullets as they were expensive.
Still no-one has been brought to justice over the killings because they had no educated people left to conduct a trial, or that's what the official party line is. In addition, none of the senior government staff ever went to places like S21 so there is no proof they knew about it!
There are also a lot of people who were forced into killing their countrymen who should also be prosecuted but ask yourself, if it's a case of kill or be killed, what would you do? I wonder if part of the reason the trials haven't started is because people cannot blame their fellow countrymen for doing what they were forced to do.
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